Welcome to Dota 2 hell.

Esports biggest spectacle is hitting its main stage this week as Valve’s Dota 2 International Championships enters its 7th year. Running for a rough total of 2 weeks, the first week of the multi-million dollar tournament took place early this Aug and ran until the 5th where the teams fought for the main event seedings, or as to who gets the lesser chances of being eliminated during the playoffs, not to mention getting the bigger shares of the prize pool.

The champion gets to take home a shield! And oh there’s also the USD 10,000,000 cash prize so fancy that.

Now not everyone is well versed on Dota 2, that’s a given, even if it’s just one of the biggest esports titles in terms of playerbase not just in the Philippines but also worldwide, and frankly there are those who might get annoyed by the endless spam of #TI7 related posts, similar to how non-NBA fans can get triggered both by legit fans and bandwagon riders thoroughly explaining how Lebron deserves the championship over Curry in 3 paragraphs or more, which can be likened as to how Suma1L solo-carried Evil Geniuses and how he is better in every way against Miracle- debate, sound confusing? Well no worries, non-Dota 2 fan for we have prepared a mini, quick survival guide on how to survive Dota 2’s #TI7 week.

Play other video games!

2017 is an exciting year for video games with a good chunk of AAA titles that were teased back in the previous E3s coming out one by one, you’ve got Resident Evil 7 which came out in January, For Honor and Horizon Zero Dawn back in February, the Nintendo Switch plus its initial lineup of titles back in March, Nier: Automata which also came out on the same month as the Switch together with Ghost Recon: Wildlands and Mass Effect: Andromeda, Injustice 2 and Tekken 7 which came out back in May and June respectively, plus the plethora of Steam games that you bought during the last sale, which then equals to a ton of backlogs that you can play and replay while everyone else is busy talking about who snatched Roshan’s Aegis.

Try other MOBAs

Back in 2014 we’ve had a list of our top preferences for the “Top MOBA or Dota-like games that you should try out” but sadly, it looks like the list needs updating as most of the titles have either ceased development or has spiraled into oblivion due to lack of community support. However, that doesn’t mean that you should not look into other MOBAs should you find Dota 2 tad hard to get into. There’s Master X Master by NCSoft which combines MOBA elements with top-down shooters in WASD control fashion, Paragon, a third-person MOBA which kinda feels like Overwatch but with Minions, Gigantic, which also feels like Overwatch but with huge monsters, Paladins, which is similar to Overwatch but more fun and forgiving, and, if you’re curious about it, Battleborn, because why not?

Be at HistoryCon!

If you’re looking to escape not just from Dota 2 but from the rest of the digitally tangled world that is video gaming (although believe me, you can’t), and try out newer experiences while not totally leaving the metro, then you should definitely check out HistoryCon which is now on its 2nd year happening later this week! Meet other History buffs, learn the secrets of competitive eating, witness how metal scraps get turned into works of art and more at World Trade Center this August 10-13, 2017. The celebrity guest lineup consists of History Channel’s starts like Corey Harrison from Pawn Stars, Jaime Dempsey from Ride N’ Seek, and Phoemela Baranda from Celebrity Car Wars, together with other special guests like Filipino Historian Dr. Ambeth Ocampo and Competitive Eater Takeru Kobayashi.